blogging in between sunbeam naps

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About Me

I'm Katje van Loon. I'm a writer, an author, a poet, and a menace to society. I am also an activist, a feminist, a geek, a knitter/crocheter, and many other things. I wear a host of hats. I've been blogging off and on (mostly on) since 2004. One of my first blog iterations was The Canadian Pagan, and I used to go by Jagged on Blogdrive.

This blog, Amoeba Kat Musings, has existed in many different forms and permutations since 2008. It's always been my writer-blog (ie, where I blog as Katje van Loon, Writer), but as time has gone on what I want to blog about as a writer has evolved. It's still evolving.

What you will find here, likely: posts on feminism and dismantling the kyriarchy. Politics. Fat acceptance. Pictures of my dog. Posts about my husband-type-person. Poetry. Me geeking out. Knitting. Occasionally, book reviews. And much, much more.

I try to be diligent about trigger warnings, but I don't put everything behind a cut. Read with caution.

(I do put spoilers behind cuts.)

On a side note, I am also an Ambassador for Barefoot Books, along with my mom. Barefoot Books supplies high-quality children's books via its ambassadors and online shop. I have been a collector of children's books for many years, and I'm excited to grow my collection with the help of Barefoot (and to help others grow their collections, too).

If you want to become an ambassador, click on the picture below to join my team.

If you just want to buy some awesome kids' books, click on this picture:

If you decide to become an ambassador under me, or buy books via the above link, you are supporting me and by extension my writing.

Resolutions

I resolve to be true to myself. This is the only resolution I feel comfortable making and it’s a tough one to keep, when I’ve spent so much of my life swaying to please other people. With this resolution, I promise that I will please other people only if it pleases me to do so; that I will think of my own well-being first and foremost; that I will not forget where I end and another person begins; that I will treat self-care as a primary goal, not something I tack on after everything else and then feel guilty about.

While I am a stronger supporter of the idea of a community of humanity over “self-made” and “bootstraps”, there is no way I can be a contributing member to ANY community if I am not taking care of myself first. I believe anything I give a community is worthless if I am being untrue to my deepest self.

Goals

Unlike resolutions, I have a lot of goals and they fit better into categories…and subcategories.

Writing

Word count:

Write 150,000 words in 2014. That’s 411 words a day. Things that count: fiction, poetry, blogging. Things that don’t count: worldbuilding, journaling (any writing I do at my Livejournal or Dreamwidth blogs are considered journaling, unless they’re cross-posted here — which very rarely happens). To help keep me accountable and on track, I’ve joined the communities getyourwordsout and inkingitout on Livejournal and Dreamwidth, respectively.

Reach 50,000 words in either Nanowrimo or one of the Camp Nanowrimos. I’m not sure if I’ll make this one or not — I embraced quitting Nano this year and that may be the start of a trend, or it may be a one-off event. I’m setting it as a goal mostly to see if last November was a one-off or the beginning of the end of my relationship with Nano.

Utilize the 750words site again. My word count goal every day to make 150,000 words in 2014 is 411. I’m going to try and top that every day by hitting 750, and the 750words site is a great way to do it. Also, there are some badges I want to attempt to get.

Projects:

Finish rewrites/edits for The Jade Star of Athering (book 2 in The Third Age).

Finish writing From the Ashes (book 2 in The Borderlands Saga).

Finish worldbuilding for Dead Transgressions.

Get halfway through Dead Transgressions (includes some necessary rewrites).

Assuming I find back the files, finish The Man of Bronze.

Start work on Anala, book 3 in The Third Age.

Start work on Book 4 in The Third Age, as of yet not titled, occurring at the same time as Anala. Outline is a must!

Postaday: post here every day in 2014. (I am not going to be too harsh on myself if I miss a few days, but the idea here is to post consistently, not once or twice a month.)

Find back my blogging voice. This isn’t a goal that’s quantifiable, but it is something I want to work towards in 2014, so I’m listing it here.

Personal Stuff

Reading

Read 10 books for pleasure. For pleasure means they’re not for worldbuilding research or school or something similar.

Make a real dent in my To Be Read pile. Ideally this would mean reading 100 books; my TBR pile is massive. Instead of giving myself a number that I’ll feel worse about not getting any closer to as time goes on, however, I’m just going to leave the goal as is: make a real dent. I’ll know when I’ve done it.

Cooking and baking

Learn to bake bread. Seriously this time. I didn’t do it in 2013 even though I said I would. I WILL in 2014.

Start making more things from scratch. There are a lot of things we go out and purchase that I think may be better made in the house — both financially and health-wise. I’m not a huge fan of highly processed food and it seems more and more everyday we just…don’t know what we’re eating. (It also seems more and more that people want to put aspartame into the weirdest things, which means I have to read the ingredients on EVERYTHING or die.)

Figure out my kitchen rhythm. When the Ogre and I live together I will be doing the cooking during the week. I need to figure out a way to make that happen so we’re both eating good, home-cooked meals and I’m not bone-exhausted by noon.

Bake something once a week. I used to bake about that often, when I was in high school. I miss it, and I’d like to expand my skills and repertoire.

I mean, there definitely needs to be more of THIS in my life.

Physical

Start physiotherapy again. This is dependent on funds being available, but I have hopes I’ll eventually be making enough money that I’ll be able to start doing physio again (and thus, able to function more normally — normally for me, at any rate).

Following that: find some sort of exercise that I can do daily that doesn’t strain my back and gives me a mild workout. Do said exercise.

Get my sleep schedule back on track and keep it there. No more of this switching to nights BS every weekend.

Mental

Work on finding a therapist. Not an easy thing, but therapy is a good thing for me and I haven’t been in far too long. I have some stuff I need to work through and I can’t fix all my problems via journaling.

Create a real manifestation board. I had one of these set up on my vanity mirror for a while, but had to take it down when we were showing the place to people. I’m going to set up one that can be moved from place to place and isn’t dependent on furniture.

Do another Good Things Jar for 2014. I did this in 2013 and it kept me going to see it full of pieces of paper, just covered in all the good things that had happened (even if they were as simple as “Still breathing”). I’m doing it again, and being more diligent with it.

Spiritual

Set up some sort of weekly practice, and blog more often at the spiritual blog. (The two things are related, as I need something to blog about at said blog.)

Spend more time with my dog. If you don’t think that’s a spiritual experience…you’ve never shared your life with a dog.

I think that’s a good list of goals for an entire year. Now to write them out and have them scattered around my house so I can see them as daily reminders of what I want to accomplish.

Thanks. I thought so too. I was so tired of making a bunch of resolutions that I never followed through on, because they were goals more than anything else — and life changes our goals. But this one can be a guiding star that I may use to keep me on track for the whole year. It’s something that’s never going to be seen as unimportant, and my life will never change so much that I don’t need to still focus on being true to myself.